Traveling Renegade

Yesterday Ofer has left us to discover the new world.
I'm sure he will soon write something about it here in the blog, but meanwhile I'd like to tell you about a small present we made him before he left.
As he quit his job and gave up his business cards, we thought we had to find a proper replacement at least for the cards. So we came up with the following:

Those who are familiar with his previous business card from work will recognize the card design :) After we made a bunch of those, we thought it'd be nice to introduce some variations.
So we made some more cards, which feature the following writings on them:
(First goes the title, then the motto on the cards top, the original card being: Ofer Lavi, Traveling Renegade / Make Yourself Mobile)

- Ofer Lavi, Extreme Bowler / Make Yourself Immobile
- Ofer Lavi, Serial Job Quitter / Make Yourself Free
- Ofer Lavi, Finally No Title / Be Yourself
- Ofer Lavi, Ex Mopnik / Foolfill Your Potential
- Ofer Lavi, Coffee Critic / Make Yourself Coffee
- Ofer Lavi, Beer Specialist / Buy Me a Beer
- Ofer Lavi, Roof Dweller / Be On Top Of It
- Achmed, Dead Terrorist / Silence! I Kill You!
For those who don't understand the last one, it's time you would: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y-waHLz-TU)

I also received some ideas from Oren, but unfortunately it was too late and I couldn't print the cards. So I'm posting his ideas here now (I made slight changes in some of them to make them more clear):

- Ofer Lavi, Personal Porter / It's actually easier on the way up

- Ofer Lavi, Official Freference / Wikipedia is for amateurs

- Ofer Lavi, Hiring Division / CV's are not made for chatting

- Ofer Lavi, Black List Keeper / You may be the next

- Ofer Lavi, Chez /Just drinking coke is lame

- Ofer Lavi, Double Agent / Ofer Levi

- Ofer Lavi, Alcohol Police / The bathroom is on the left

Some of those are a bit personal, so that even I don't fully understand them...

So, we wish Ofer a good journey, which he no doubt will have, and we'll be watching him through his posts here (I count on it) and through the map, that was added on the blog's first page. As you can see it is called "Where in the world is rakanikan?".

Nutrias, cranes and runaway buffalos in Hahula.

On the last Saturday we went to a small trip to Hahula. The original plan included Ofer as well, but he pretended to be sick at the last moment (he pretended well enough to actually feel sick).
To make it short: we went to Hahula, we rented bicycles and we spent a good time there biking, enjoying the landscape and looking at the birds and the nutrias.


There were also some KKL guides on the way, who told us some interesting things about buffaloes, which ran away and were hiding and refusing to come back, cranes council ("Next year we want Thai food!" Gal©) and overeating Finnish birds.
This is a nutria:

And this is us. We had to tamper with some road signs to make people come to us, so we could ask them to take our picture.

The rest of the pictures can be found here:

Hahula 2007

Make way for Frankenfish

In Cuzco we were sleeping in a hostel called "Royal Frankenstein". It had a scary, Frankenstein related interior design. It also had an aquarium with two grim faced large fish. And this is a newspaper clip that was attached to the aquarium:

So what happens to these ordinary salmon if the genetically modified lunkers ever get loose? The whole article wasn't there, and it would have remained a mystery if I hadn't found the following article: Make way for Frankenfish

Pictures from Peru

We finally went through all our pictures (near 2000 of them), picked the best and arranged them in our web albums. Remember the address? No? Here it is:

Peru

Some of you have already seen part of them, and we'll show you the rest next time we meet.
Oren, you missed the first session, so you can look at Manu, Inca Trail and Machu Picchu by yourself, or just wait till you come and I'll show you personally.
Eventually a printed version album will be made too.

Nothing is impossible

Before going on the Santa Cruz trek we had a day trip to one of the glaciers near Huaraz.

This is a sign we saw on the way:

For those who forgot (or never knew) Spanish, it says: "Access is dificult, but not impossible".
I especially liked this sign, because it really states the essence of almost all the things we´ve done here in Peru :)
We´re in Lima now, waiting for our flight home and planning how to spend 5 hours in Amsterdam. So I guess the next blog entry will be written at home. See you (some of you) soon.

Inca Trail: part II

The third day was much easier. We arrived to the camp after only half a day of hiking and then visited some nice Inca ruins:

As I said, we were 6 people in our group. Us, a couple from England and a couple from USA. The couple from USA live in LA, and the guy works as a postproduction superviser in Hollywood. One of his jobs is ¨Prison Break¨. The Inca trail was the only thing they did in Peru, they took a flight home right after it. The english couple lived in Australia for 1.5 years and on their way home they traveled in SA for 3 months.

So on our third night we had plenty of time to talk and to play some cards. They taught us a backpackers game called "Shithead", which was nice. We´ll teach you when we come back. Another game we played that night was one called "Tip the porters". We all lost a lot of money...

Well, now we are in Huaraz, getting ready for another trek, Santa Cruz. All our things are packed, so I guess there will be "Inca Trail:part III" with the pictures of Machu Picchu later.

See ya.

The Inca Trail: part I

We´ve done it! Yesterday, after 4 days hike we arrived to Machu Picchu completing the famous Inka Trail trek. It was a very beautiful trek, but as much as it was beautiful it was hard.

On the first day we got up at 3:30 am and were taken to the "Kilometer 82". From there we hiked for more than 8 hours climbing more than 1000 meters! At the end of the day we were ready to be sacrificed to the Inca gods.

Here you can see us, happy and unsuspecting at the beginning of the trail :)

The trail itself is amazing. It was built by the Incas in 15th century and most of it is intact till today. It´s a paved trail going up and down the mountains through the cloud forest. It has many hundreds of stairs you have to climb or descend (which is much better, but still painful).

Here we are, on the second day, at the top of the "Dead Woman´s Pass" 4215 meters high, after walking for another 3 hours and climbing another 415 meters. We´re happy because from here we´re to go 700 meters down for 2 hours at least. Joy!

End of the second day in the tent. The genuine joy is caused by the fact that from here we´re going only down :)

We were 6 people all in all in our group. The company that arranged the trek provided us with almost everything. The food, tents and all the equipment were carried by 10 porters and one cook, each carrying 25 kg. Those people usually come from different local communities, not all of them even speak spanish. But the service was amazing. We were sometimes embarassed, because those people were working like slaves, setting our tents, preparing and serving the meals, bringing us tea and hot water to the tents in the morning, not to mention carring all the weight. Each day they started an hour after us and then passed us on the way almost running. The Inca stairs didn´t seem to have much effect on them. The meals were amazing, we couldn´t expect this kind of food under those circumstences. I´ll only add that even our napkins were folded in a different oregami manner each day.

Here we are with the porters. We tryed to thank them and smile on every possible occasion, and they were all very nice people, but still it was kinda embarassing.

Well, tomorrow we´re flying to Lima and I have to go to sleep now. So I owe you the rest of the story, where we hiked more, visited remains of Inca cities, played "Shithead" and finally got to Machu Picchu.

Good night.

Back from the jungle

Hi all!
After a week in Manu jungle we arrived back to Cusco, where we´re going to spend 3 days preparing ourselves to the Inka Trail trek.
Right now we both have altitude sickness (which means we´re dizzy, sleepy, nausious and can´t spell English words correct), so I´m not writing anything long now.
In few words - Manu was great. We saw a lot of wild animals and got bitten by various kinds of insects:) And never before we were so far from the civilization.
I hope I´ll be able to post some pictures soon.
Going to lie down now :)

Open your ears

I know I was bad lately ... but it's not my fault, I was busy trying to get permission to enter the US again after living there for 4 years. Sounds funny, but believe me ... it's not! (and it's not over yet :-( ).
Anyway, for a change I decided to share with you not just images, but also music from the celebration of the PachaMama (mother earth) that was held in the museum where Maria is working. This is a traditional celebration in the Andes region in which the earth is literally fed by humans (and not vice versa as usual).


But not just food ... since the earth also needs to enjoy, it gets a chance to smoke a bit :-)

and some partying, of course!

Other than feeding the earth, we also made some meditation ... can you find me and Maria in the picture?

But the best part of the ceremony was the music played on traditional Andean instruments:

Some of them look kind of familiar - press here to hear the music

... Some of them not that familiar - click here to hear the music

... And some instruments I haven't seen/heard in my life - click here to hear the music


And before I finish ... just a nice picture:

That's all for now. I guess that the next photos from South America will be posted by Vlad and Alona ... Let's just hope that they'll only take "still" photographs, if you know what I mean.

See you all in October,
Oren

Spiderpig

A few days ago was my 2nd second year in the company I work for. So they gave me some presents: a cup and a toy pig-shaped magnet. The cup is still standing on my desk, but the pig magnet was put to use right away!
So now I have a Spiderpig in my room! Check it out:


Spiderpig, Spiderpig, does whatever a Spiderpig does. Can he swing from a web? No, he can't. He's a pig. Watch out! It's Spiderpig!

For those who don't get it - it's high time you watched "The Simpsons" movie.

I'm once, twice, three times an uncle

I see it’s been a while since we’ve posted anything here. I guess the summer is taking its toll on us all. This is why I’m now declaring officially the roof-season open – we have everything we need up here so everyone’s invited for some fresh air, movies, drinks – the works!

Anyway, this isn’t why I’m posting. As of yesterday (10-Aug-2007), around 20:10, my uncleness has been raised to the third level. The new guy’s name is Ori and he’s still recovering from his jolty entrance to this world, but both he and my sister are expected to be home soon enough.

Mazal Tov!

Armageddon

I was out on the roof late last night and I felt the urge to shout “Armageddon!”. This wasn’t because of a failed feltching session but rather because of what I saw in the sky. For a brief moment I thought there was a fire raging on somewhere. But no, it was just the sky going crazy and the end of the world coming.


The cloud rolled in over Herzliya and things went crazy there for about half an hour.

Better never than late

OK, I have been given fair warning this year regarding the fact that I was going to get my birthday present at a fashionably late time.

It seems, however, that someone has a rather mean sense of humor. As some of you may know I went to a cousin’s wedding last night. The wedding was great and we all had a lot of fun. As I was making my way to my car I could see that someone had left something on the windshield. “Just another flyer” I thought. Imagine my surprise when I found out what it really was:

Parthenon and Anderson

Yassas friends! I’m back from Greece and even though my first visit there was marked by some bad timing all in all I enjoyed myself and will probably be heading back there again one day.

The heat wave that has been following me around Europe showed up also in Greece. Luckily I had some short pants otherwise I would have died (not that wearing a suit there was a great pleasure...)

After wrapping up the meetings I hurried to the Acropolis to see the Parthenon and other sites there. Unfortunately the site is under repairs so most pictures taken there would have shown mainly scaffolding.



The view of Athens from the acropolis was great and it also allowed me to spot this little piece of heaven in the city – maybe I should equip my roof in a similar manner...



While in the acropolis I heard music from the amphitheatre. After discussing the matter with some Greeks It turned out that there was going to be a concert there that same evening. Apparently Laurie Anderson was going to perform.

Ok, so I didn’t know who she was either. But what the hell – if there was going to be a show at the amphitheatre at the acropolis I was going to be there!



As it turned out we (I was traveling with someone else from work) arrived late and they wouldn’t let us go to our seats (which were in the lower tier). We went to the top tier and were thankful for it, and for being late. This Anderson type is a weird one. While it is basically a musical show the music isn’t very harmonic, she doesn’t really sing, and since this is an as-of-yet unreleased album no one really had any idea what she was going to say. So everyone just sat there and listened carefully.


When the show finally came to an end everyone clapped their hands politely. This was just too much for me – I started shouting like I had just been to a Metallica concert and this seemed to rouse the crowd – everyone started shouting and whistling like crazy. It was really funny. Ay, those crazy Greeks.

That’s it for now... kalispera.

Bern, baby, Bern

Upon arrival to Bern I got completely wet. This was due to:

1. The fact that it was raining.
2. The fact that I couldn’t find an ATM (I needed Swiss Franks for the Taxi).
3. The fact that the taxi driver took me on a 30 Frank ride instead of the 1 minute walk I actually needed to get from the train station to the hotel.

Still, I was relieved to find that there were no demonstrations going on. This might have been due to:
1. The fact that the Swiss Parliament was in session while I was in town (which is also why there were almost no available hotel rooms in Bern).
2. The fact that the Swiss have absolutely nothing to demonstrate about.
3. The fact that there seemed to be a convention of no-parking signs in Bern:


All in all though, Bern is a lovely place to hang out in. It has a charming ancient center where you can stroll through the streets, do some people-watching and find some interesting shops. One of these seemed to be selling Yamaha made merchandise, which included both Pianos and Motorcycles:


Much like the rest of their European neighbors, the Swiss love their bicycles. There are plenty of them to be found in every street. So much so in fact, that I ran into some models which were previously unknown to me – check out this two person contraption:


I know I threatened some people that the next post must be theirs or else. I’ve also promised to help them with that post so I’m giving them a pardon until such time as I actually get around to helping them (hopefully during this weekend).

BTW – we’re all meeting on Saturday. Be there or face my wrath!

Living la vida Vodka

Unlike my first visit to Moscow, which was 2fast2furious2fuckinghot (37 degrees in Moscow?!?!), this visit found me a in a deeper state of relaxation. I had a lot of free time and I set out to discover the mysteries of the red square. As is the case in many of my travels I found myself in the middle of yet another demonstration. Luckily for me it was a quiet one and it was about the environment so no one got hurt (in other words – it was pretty boring ;) ).


I continued my foray deep behind the iron curtain and marveled at the fact that it was a beautiful day and that I was walking about this place as if it was just another tourist attraction in some sunny part of the world.


Everything was so bright and colorful, the sun was out and people were about.


Only my dear old friend Lenin reminded me of the history of this place. Shalom Haver.

I had intended to go into the mausoleum but there was a big line of people and I have never been a person to stand in line. Especially not in Moscow :)

One final note – I expect the next post here to have some nice pictures from Nepal. If not – I shall have my revenge. The people I’m addressing – you know who you are – beware! I know where you live!

Dance the night away

Our first, long awaited, blog-documented wedding has finally come...

Just now I found the perfect present for last night, as always – just a little too late. But still, here goes:

HH0142---Renegade® Wedding Hat – yes – it’s a renegade wedding hat!

For those of us who could not attend (that’s you, JFK) and for those of us with ridiculously crappy memory (that’s me) here are some highlights of last night’s festivities...
We had some bridal dances,


Some terrified guests,


Some advice from not-so-newly-weds,


And some all out partying by everyone


All I can say is mazal tov!

It's the time of the season

It's open season again... Burn baby, burn!



I must say that even though I've taken a lot of heat for having a kumzitz on Shavuot, I think we kicked ass!

The shower head

I don’t know if you remember that Seinfeld episode with the shower head (www.youtube.com) If you don’t remember this one then here’s the summary from www.tv.com:

“The shower heads in Jerry's building are being replaced with a new low-flow model; Newman finds a source for black market shower heads.”

They end up buying the “Commando 450” from the black market guy even though he warns them that it’s used only in circuses to wash the elephants.


In true Kramer form they buy the shower head, install it and let the mayhem begin.


So I was a little nervous when I stepped in to the shower here in Santiago – I think it’s even bigger than the Commando 450... Must be the Commando 560 or something: